The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

Destiny is in the Definition - Part 2

You can judge your leaders by whether they agree with you or not. But if they don't produce consequences that are good for the long-term best interests of the society - which is to say all of us - then they may simply be toxic (to use a popular term in its popular use).

Look first to determine how superbly they performed their leadership role in all of its aspects. For example, CEOs have a moral obligation to make the larger economy better than it was when they stepped into that role. Their role says they are to serve the best self-interests of all of their stakeholders, not just those who track only the numbers.

Then measure the consequences some 20 or 30 years after they have left office. What President has not promised to make a better world for all of us? If you bought into that, how's that working for you?

Recently the Harvard Business Review (blogwise) offered an open forum on the question: "Should leaders be 'frank' or 'deceptive'?" That a really weird question. Are we to imagine Hamlet asking, "To be or not to be 'frank'? - that is the question." Or "To be or not to be 'deceptive'? - that is the question." And since when is candor or deception - like "love" - not in the eye of the beholder?

The question is surely not "frank" - since the asker does not reveal what's in it for him. And if the "leader" is not "frank," does that mean necessarily that she is being "deceptive?"

But that's what definitions can do for you. They can lead you down dead-end streets. If a "leader" is just a bag of tricks, why would we need a new term for that? We've had those people and many names for them since the beginning of time. Or did human history begin in 1980?

Destiny is in the Definition - Part 1

Define a word, and you have launched or facilitated what you will do in its name. A good example is the word "leadership." Whatever it means to you will predict what you will do in its name. It will predict to how you will interpret the "leader's" performance. And it will predict to how you interpret what others say about "leadership." If you use it as a synonym for "management," then you may use the two words interchangeably. If you don't know exactly what someone does, then that person may be a "leader" because he or she is influential. A president might be viewed as a "leader" for no particular reason other than that we attach that label to him or her.

Now, there may still be two or three leader-mongers out there who don't or can't see leadership as a performing art. Leadership is a role, not a person. Thus those few may miss the only two important criteria for judging a "leader's" performance in that role:

1. How well the incumbent plays the role he or she got into; and
2. What the residual consequences were of how he or she played the role.

The first criterion is easy enough. But, since most people don't play life according to how well they perform the roles they get themselves into, they think it's all a matter of ad hoc opinion. You can applaud or damn your spouse's performance as a spouse. My guess would be that either way, you're not looking at that person's role description (if they even have one). What is the "leader's" unique role in every instance? A Broadway actress is "successful" if the show is sold out for months, not because you can mimic her singing. And our "leaders"?

Most people would rather skip the second criterion. That's because they don't want to be held accountable for their own impact on other people - or the society. They think"freedom" gives them the prerogative to ruin other people's lives - what ever their motives.

More in Part 2...

Voices in the Melee

It seems that the primary entitlement these days is that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. So I'll add my voice to the melee - even knowing that opinion free-for-alls may accomplish nothing in the end but the extinction of this civilization. Let me explain.

Native americans lived for 35,000 years or so on this same land. They didn't last that long by making everyone's voice equal to everyone else's voice. They were truth-seekers like us. They believed that wisdom could be shared only by those who were capable of receiving it.

This presents a problem for would-be leaders. They have to kow-tow to the least capable to get their votes - since there are far more of the least capable than there are of the most capable. Which reminds us that the Greeks who experimented with democracy and became convinced that it wouldn't work. So when our would-be leaders in Washington or in the executive suite talk, who are they talking to? If they aim to make a world that accommodates the least of us, it would not be fit for the best of us.

Terrible choice - to get elected. They have to make promises to whomever happens to be voting, about whatever their current interests seem to be. That may make them rich and powerful. But it will make of us a "third-world" country. If they don't know how to make a world in which all know who and what to follow, then their success is our failure.

We've been on that path for some years. Real leaders are makers, not vote-getters. It is said that President Obama "won" (according to Jack Welch and other celebs). But won what? The prerogative to speed up our demise as a civilization? I can barely make out what his agenda is, other than catering to those who voted for him. Yeah, he made promises. Now he has to deliver on those promises, no matter what the costs to our civilization. I don't even know what kind of world he wants to live in. Makes me wonder if he does....

Perversity, Cooking, and Leadership - Let's Just Order In

I love perversity. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in touch with reality very often. The rationality that we try to impose on the world doesn't often work. The assumptions through which we observe the world more often then not, "spin" what we see out of shape.

For example, people have lost interest in food preparation at home. Or maybe they are just increasingly incompetent to do so. Or maybe (if yo've got the wherewithal) it's just easier to go out or order in. All we can know for sure is that there has been a steep decline in home cooking. At the same time, there has been an increasing number of cookbooks published, and the number of cooking shows on television have increased significantly too. Seems a bit perverse, doesn't it?

But where I want to go with these cultural perversities is this: As people have become less and less capable of leading themselves - for whatever reason - there has been a huge increase in the number of books published about leadership, as well as a surfeit of seminars on that subject. In other words, the spate of books about leadership might be interpreted as a loss of the capacity for providing it, coupled with an increase in simply reading about it (see the parallel with home cooking and cookbooks in the previous paragraph). People who have no intention of equipping themselves to prepare to be leaders are enchanted by the notion of reading about it. Most leadership books either offer pages and pages about the obvious, or emulate the writers of science-fiction (or of soap operas).

All this might suggest that what today's so-called leaders do best is try to apply the latest ideas about leadership (there are none) without understanding how to create an idea or make any real contact with the reality in which they attempt to apply those fads. People who can't think for themselves are fair game for the predators who want to peddle ready-made recipes. People who can't cook buy cookbooks that promise to make it "easy" - that is, that require no thinking on their part. The popularity of the "Dummie" books makes the point.

About all such matters, we live in a cookie-cutter world. More and more would-be leaders fake their way along -  not by being the cutter, but by being the cookie.

Some Leadership Advice From Lee Thayer: Take Your Eye Off the Bottom Line

That must look like some whack-o advice. It is advice, however, not much heeded in our world. We're "bottom line" people. But you'd be surprised by how valuable this simple bit of advice can be. Here's why.

The conventional bottom line numbers may tell you a little bit about the current and most recent financial history of the company. They may tell you where you are relative to where your forecasts were. But they won't tell you what to do about what's wrong. They won't tell you what the situation might be if you had prepared differently. They won't tell you how to get from "here" to "there, or even where "there" is. The numbers may tell you something, but they won't tell you what you did right, or wrong.

The point is that taking your eye off the bottom line, sets you free to put your eye on what drives the bottom line. Things like towering competence, intensity, zeal, and focus. Like preparedness for whatever happens (or doesn't). Like reserve energy and acumen. Like the kind of intelligence that matters. Like being committed to a level of performance that forever pulls the bottom line along in its irresistible wake.

Put your eye on what drives the bottom line. Then develop those capabilities - and the numbers will always meet or exceed your expectations.

Who Should Own the Problem - The Staffer or the Leader?

In a previous post with a subtitle of "lighting a fire under them," Jim Stroup may be assuming away what may be the underlying problem. His posts are always very astute and always worth reading. So this is more of a question than a criticism.

One of the key elements in my work with CEOs in helping them make high-performance organizations is the core strategem: Who should OWN what problems? If you get this wrong, you have perennial problems you can't solve.

Problem ownership. Who should own the problem of be "motivated" - the staffer or the leader? Who should own the problem of being "competent" - the worker or the leader? Who should own the problem of the employee's "happiness" at work - the employee or the boss? And so on through the whole litany.

We may live in a culture where we have come to believe that learning in a classrom is the teacher's problem. That makes the real problem insolvable. Where the problem is not owned by the person who should own it, the system is dysfunctional and cannot be fixed except by fixing the underlying dysfunction. Where what's at stake is the performance of the organization, the cultural bias that makes everything the leader's problem is simply wrong.

If we don't get problems owned by the person who could actually fix them, we will have them forever. The whole notion that you have to motivate people to perform the roles they volunteered to fulfill is ludicrous on the face of it. It's just folklore on a cultural level.

In his review of Abrashoff's book, It's Your Ship, I thought Jim was decrying the practice of attributing all of the success to the leader. But here he seems to be nurturing that view without realizing it. As most folks do these days.

So...whose problem should seeing the problem be? My anwer: the person who created it or who is in the best position to resolve it. That's the Toyota Way. But our automotive engineers don't get it. Their cultural lenses are out of focus. Maybe here too.

Leadership from The Devil Wears Prada with Lee Thayer and Yvonne DiVita

High performance organizations have high performance leaders. What, exactly does that mean?

Lee Thayer touches upon the qualities needed to create a high performance organization - and how leadership is not something thrust upon one. In this 20-minute talk with Yvonne DiVita, Lee demonstrates the competencies of Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep) in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada.

While the vast majority of the public feel Miranda is mean and unfair, especially to the poor, mistreated Andy (played by Anne Hathaway), Thayer says, Nay.

In this interview on his view of the movie as it relates to high performance organizations and leaders, he says she's the embodiment of a great leader...

Listen to the discussion and decide for yourself:

MP3 File